Host of Exiles
by DarkBeta
Summary: AU. No one escapes the island of exiles.


(Even more AU, tho' no demons. Nobody you recognize is mine. And since this is AU, people may be out of character . . . so i may have _meant_ them to be recognizable but failed.)

Suou Yuzuru returned from governing the barbarians with a blond mistress and a bastard he called his heir. His mother loathed them both. The mistress found the climate unfavorable for her health. She returned to the barbarians. The son, Suou Tamaki, proved more durable.

The Suou and Ootori clans had been rivals since Yuzuru put aside his Ootori wife. The head of the Ootori clan noted that his third son, Kyouya, was Tamaki's agemate. He told Kyouya to make a friend of the barbarian boy. Some advantage might come of it.

Kyouya didn't find the task difficult. The bastard was absurdly trusting. Trifles sent him leaping in joy or crouched in pain, though he made no complaint of his distant father and hostile grandmother. Women loved the novelty of his face and speech, and even his pale hair. Tamaki blossomed at having their approval at least.

"I am the king of women's hearts," he boasted one night, when he and Kyouya had been trading cups and verses.

Ootori Kyouya took the story to the Suou matriarch. With a show of sacrifice, she saw Tamaki proscribed on charges of naming himself a ruler.

In Onnamachi execution was a sin. Crimes too severe for pardon were punished by exile. Every summer when the winds and tide moved together, white barges drifted from the shore. They bore the thieving poor, heretic priests, ambitious but unfortunate nobles, and other outcasts. Without sails or oars the ships could never move against the tide. If they missed landfall at the Island of Men and drifted sodden on the open sea, well, that was the judgement of heaven and no sin at all.

The third son received the honor of overseeing the exile ships in place of his older brothers. With satisfaction the head of the clan watched their competition. He was overjoyed, or as near as an undemonstrative man could be, and victory over the Suous distracted him from clan matters.

Kyouya made use of his unusual freedom. Suou Tamaki's excesses helped, like the glittering distractions of a magician's show. Even in exile a noble required noble accouterments. The Suou matriarch was paying heavily to be rid of her descendent.

One day Tamaki raved about the perils of boredom, and required games and toys. To cards and scrolls and shell-matching sets Kyouya added bows and swords, suitable past-times for a noble youth though nothing Tamaki pursued. Next it was fashionable clothes. Cords and trinkets and silk robes in a dozen hues were augmented with woolens and linen, furs against the cold, and spun thread and needles.

"The price of a most profitable agreement with Hitachiin clan," he told his father.

Lovely gardens required flowers and plant pots and dwarfed trees. Instead of rare exotics Kyouya packed farmer's seeds or saplings, and trowels and hoes and pipes. With the fish eggs, cakes and delicacies for fine dining he included dried meats and fruits, pickles, salt fish, and sacks of grain. Wines and liquors were sold off, and the barrels filled with sweet water.

"Billed at full price, and the profit comes to my hands," he told his father, but the head of Ootori frowned.

"Best if the head of your clan hears nothing. Silence makes honest answers easy."

"As you command, my sire."

Rumor said nobles might be murdered by their fellow exiles as soon as the barges were cast off. Pale bodies had washed ashore in the past, not drowned but broken. Money, they said, was worthless on the Island of Men. Kyouya doubted that, but he had no doubts of its worth in Onnamachi.

Bribery got him the ship's roster, so the mad or monstrous could be weeded out -- Tamaki alone was madness enough for one ship-- and leverage found against the remainder. Even exiles had kin or friends, for whose sake they'd give brief service.

He bought a ship openly, and ordered paint and gilt for its rotten boards. His father praised him before his brothers. (Another ship, as sound as Kyouya could find, was made suitably ill-looking. ) The first barge sank at its moorings the night it was loaded. The watchmen, as agreed, swam to safety. (The exile ships would be gone before they showed unusual wealth.)

The goods supposedly sunken made a good profit in scattered markets. He said nothing to his father, but the head of Ootori smiled once in the boy's presence.

The second barge was hastily hung with banners -- before the Suou matriarch could confirm its unsoundness -- and loaded with the cargo Kyouya chose. It looked even less sea-worthy laden. The astrologers chose a day to launch it, a fair day with a steady wind. (Kyouya, it happened, was aware that the Second Principal Honored Knower of Heaven had not lived a life of quiet contemplation lately.)

The ragged poor, roped together like beasts in harness, shambled aboard. For those who could afford bribes the ropes were replaced with entirely symbolic cords, but guards stood around them against attempts at rescue. The highest ranking exile went last.

Beside the Suoh matriarch Suoh Yuzuru stood impassively. Carefully within his sight, the Ootori head was just as expressionless. Two sons at his back were the only goad he needed.

Doubtless he looked for the third as well. Kyouya had better things to do than stand in a crowd to watch the barge float off. He stayed in the shadows.

Women shrieked from the harbor walk. Tamaki smiled and bowed and blew kisses to them. An hour before he'd sobbed in a corner, but he could always rouse himself to play a part. Some of the girls fainted. Several pulled out vials that could be poison, and waved them about until guards were near enough to take them away.

The mooring ropes fell back onto the wharf. Pilots began to row the barge out of the harbor. Tamaki stared back at the crowd, but not the platform where his father stood. More women shrieked and fainted. The barge was almost past the breakwater when the boy leaned forward, waving both arms.

"Here, mother! I'm here! Stay well! Take care of yourself! Mo-o-other!"

Kyouya could make out pale hair, no more than that, and half the whores in the city bleached their heads these days. In his conviction Tamaki leaned farther and farther over the rail though. Just before he reached the tipping point, about to drown in the harbor and waste Kyouya's preparation, the third Ootori son took two steps to catch his shirt and drag him back to the deck.

"Idiot."

"Ah, I have been saved by the kindness of strangers! My gratitude will be eternal, commoner, and your reward overwhelming . . . ."

Tamaki blinked. Kyouya pushed his glasses into place, and decided regretfully that putting his fingers in his ears would be improper. Even on the deck of an exile ship, surrounded by commoners and riff-raff, an Ootori behaved as an Ootori.

"Kyou-kun? You shouldn't be here. You need to get off before it's too late!" He threw himself at the railing again. "Hello-o-o! Commoner boat-things, come back here!!"

The crews of the pilot boats, rowing hard to drag the barge into the summer current, could not hear him. Once again Kyouya pulled him back from the edge. Tamaki's violet eyes filled with tears.

"It is because of me, yes? Your father chose another for his heir, and disowned you, and sent you into exile so you'd never trouble the Ootoris, and now you'll drown in a horrible storm, or parch in the middle of the trackless sea, or the commoners will mutiny and use you horribly . . . !

"Since we're on the same ship, my consolation is you'll die the same way."

Tamaki dropped to the deck, clutching his knees and whimpering.

"The monsters on the Island of Men will tear you to pieces! I've ruined the life of my dearest friend!"

"An interesting viewpoint."

Tamaki believed Kyouya acted from friendship. It was useful to let him think so. The idiot failed to hate the father who abandoned him. He'd even sought the approval of the bitch who poisoned his mother, and exiled her own descendant. Really, the matriarch was right. Tamaki could never have become a valued Suou, He didn't understand the profits of revenge.

The barge was well into the outward current now. The pilot boats cast off their tows and began to tack back toward the harbor. At this distance the crowd on the wharf looked like a pebbled beach. Their shouts were a distant surf.

Did his father wonder yet where his third son was? Had bodyguards been sent to find him? The head of Ootori would be slow to realize that one of the clan was beyond his reach, slow to understand that the rank and power he used for bait were dismissed as worthless.

He'd realize it in the end. Unlike Tamaki, the head of Ootori would understand Kyouya's revenge.


End file.
